Rainbow Riots Festival

Rainbow Riots Festival is a public event that platforms performing arts, talks and workshops about LGBTQ issues around the world.

Rainbow Riots Festival

Rainbow Riots Festival is a public event that platforms performing arts, talks and workshops about LGBTQ issues around the world. It is the world’s first LGBTQ festival with a ’world’ theme, highlighting artists, activists and change-makers from countries where sexual minorities are criminalised. It is also a safe space for international actors, stakeholders and artists to meet, make connections and inspire each other.

In 2017 we organised the first Rainbow Riots Festival in Stockholm, Sweden, during Stockholm Pride. The festival included seminars, workshops and live performances on the main stage of Stockholm Pride in front of a 6,000 strong audience. This was the first time Ugandan, Malawian and Jamaican LGBTQ artists ever performed together internationally, and the event received significant media coverage including the cover of Sweden’s biggest newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

After Pride Uganda 2017 wasstopped by the Ugandan authorities, we organised Rainbow Riots Festival in Kampala, which was to become the only Pride- related event that year in Uganda. The event took place in a safe space where we invited the grassroots community to an evening of performing arts that showcased and celebrated our collaborative music project with the Ugandan LGBTQ community. The event received widespread coverage in LGBTQ media around the world, with news outlets dubbing it ”Uganda’s secret Pride celebration”.